Tabitha appeared and bore off three chairs,--one on her head and one in each hand. We understood the signal. Harry and I took up my mother's couch; Barton and his son loaded themselves with two chairs each; the Doctor lifted the arm-chair with both hands, and, holding it out before him, led the way, somewhat impeded by his burden; and so we moved in slow procession to the house. In the afternoon, when Barton and his son were gone, the Doctor, Harry, and I took a walk to the site of the old forest. We found a few more flowers like those Harry had brought to my mother in the morning, but nothing else that the Doctor cared for. On our way back, I told him the story of Shaler's attempt and failure. I wonder I did not tell it to you when you were here. But we had so much to ask and to say, and the time was so short! I will tell it to you now. Shaler did not wish to burn down the old house, nor even to pull it down. He wished to renew and remodel it so slowly and so cautiously that those who were in it should hardly be aware of change until they learned it by increase of comfort. He was not a self-centred, but a very public-spirited man. He had a great ambition for his State. He wished it to be a model of prosperity, material and moral. He saw that its natural advantages entitled it to take this position. The most practical of reformers, he began with himself. He found fault with nobody; he preached to nobody; he meant to let his plantation speak for him. His plan was simply to substitute inducement for coercion,--to give his men a healthy interest in their labor by letting them share the profits,--in short, to bring them under the ordinary motives to exertion. This does not appear to you a very original scheme, nor, probably, a very dangerous one. He entered upon it, however, with great precautions, having due regard to law, and, as he thought, to opinion. He did not pay his people wages, nor even make them presents in money. He gave them better food, better clothes, better houses, letting their comforts and luxuries increase in exact proportion to their industry. The result was what he had hoped,--or rather, it was beyond his hopes. The pecuniary advantage was greater and more speedy than he had expected. He did not boast himself. He waited for his abundant crops, his fine gardens and orchards, and his hard-working people to bring him enviers and imitators. The report, in fact, soon spread, that Shaler was trying a new system, and that it was succeeding. Neighbors came to inspect and inquire,--first the near, then the more distant. Shaler forgot his caution. He was an enthusiast, after all. He saw proselytes in his guests. He laid bare his schemes and hopes. These aimed at nothing less than the conversion of the whole State, through his success, to more enlightened views; thence, a revisal of the laws, a withdrawal of the checks on benevolent effort; and finally, the merging of slavery in a new